Rocking a Calgary Flames hat and leisurely smoking a cigar as he strolled through a near-six hour pro-am round Wednesday, Rocco Mediate cut the figure of a man very much at home at Canyon Meadows Golf and Country Club.

Who could blame him?

The Greensburg, Penn. product did win the inaugural Shaw Charity Classic by seven shots last year — about the most comfortable margin possible in pro golf.

“That happens sometimes,” shrugged the 51-year-old. “It’s one of those weeks where nothing really happened bad. A lot of good shots, a lot of good putting. It was freaky, actually.

“(Fellow competitors) were like looking at me, ‘what the hell’s the matter with you?’ I don’t really have an answer for that. I have no idea. But it was good.”

The Flames hat a gift from his billet this week — the NHL team’s part-owner Clay Riddell (“I’m staying with Clay, so I have to wear his hat. What are you going to do? He’d throw me in the garage and I wouldn’t have a bed to sleep in.”) — Mediate couldn’t feel more at home this week as the Champions Tour returns to Calgary.

He has actually never had a run quite like he did here last year and on the ‘what-have-you-done-lately’ tour world, reliving what glories you’re afforded is like enjoying mom’s cooking again. What a glory it was when he went 63-64-64 to post a 22-under total.

“I’ve had days like it but never weeks. That was my lowest score ever in three days,” he explained.

“I shot 20-under par — I won the Buick Open in 2000 — but that was (over) four days.”

Chances are he won’t be replicating anything quite so low this time when the tournament’s first round begins on Friday.

“You come in here and look at the golf course . . . the scores are going to be not as low this year,” he surmised. “It’s just playing a little longer, a little softer. And 15’s changed — (converted from a 523-yard short par-5 into a long par-4 that requires accuracy and length off the tee) — which makes a big difference because now it becomes an extremely difficult driving hole.”

While Mediate was clearly the man to beat last year, everyone’s chasing Bernhard Langer this season. With five victories and $2,686,521 in winnings so far this campaign, the German is exerting a Tiger-like dominance over the senior circuit.

“The guy’s a workaholic. He never stops,” said Mediate. “If I was (European Ryder Cup captain Paul) McGinley, he’d be my first pick, period . . . I wouldn’t even think about it twice. I might even throw Monty — (Colin Montgomerie, second on the Champions Tour money list, but not playing in Calgary this week) — with him.

“It’s fun to have a guy like that because it makes you work harder,” he added of Langer, who is certainly one of the favourites this week. “It makes you want to get better to try to beat him.”

Players rarely command that level of dominance over a tour, except those named Tiger Woods. At least the Tiger of a few years ago. Today’s Tiger hasn’t won a major tournament in more than six years when he beat Mediate in a playoff to take the 2008 U.S. Open. After shutting down his season to recover from a back injury, Woods announced on his website earlier this week that he was parting ways with Canadian swing coach Sean Foley.

Mediate, who has played countless rounds with the legend, applauds the move.

“I’m not surprised at all where he is now. But I’m happy where he is now, though,” he said. “Now he’s by himself.

“But here’s how I’m looking at it. Tiger’s done now for the year, he’s finished. It was inevitable he was going to reinjure (his back), coming back and doing the same things when he injured it.”

Mediate would know. He spent much of his early career trying to come back from a back injury that put him on the shelf while lifting his clubs out of the trunk of his car in 1993. He underwent surgery in 1999 after seeking advice from Fuzzy Zoeller, long plagued by back injuries, too. Now, he’s the one with the sage advice. For a Tiger.

“All I’ve done my whole career is figure out a way to get around it. I still do,” Mediate explained. “I have no issues, but I think ‘if I start doing that, it’s going to cause this and it will hurt again.’ So when you come back out of an injury that’s that devastating, even to (Tiger Woods), you have to change. You have to say ‘wait a second, this is what’s caused it, I’m not doing that anymore.’ A couple of days ago, he said ‘I’m not doing that anymore.’

“Wherever he goes now, I just hope it’s to somebody that gets the club to where it belongs and take the stress off his body. Because if he continues that way, it will break again.

“What I keep telling people and they keep asking me, ‘Can he get back to where he was?’ Of course he can,” Mediate said. “He’s a cold-blooded killer when he had that look. When he knew where his ball was going, you couldn’t touch him. Do you think that’s going to change when he can find his ball again? It’s not going to change at all because that’s all he’s ever known.”

CHIP SHOTS . . . Due to projected poor weather in Calgary this weekend, officials have rescheduled tee times. The second round on Saturday will now begin at 10:30 a.m. The championship final round will tee off at 10 a.m. Both rounds will be played off split tees . . . Tee times for Thursday’s second pro-am begin at 7:20 a.m. with big names such as Fred Couples (9:20 a.m., No. 1), Hale Irwin (9:30 a.m., No. 1) and Langer (12:30 p.m., No. 1) in the field.

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Defending champion Rocco Mediate feeling right at home at Shaw Charity Classic

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